Aloha Deputy!

Requiem for a Lightweight



Update: I had an attribute incorrectly set for the publication of the video, since it was finished before the post went up, and I didn't want it to be available before the post that went with it. I've fixed it now; if some of you tried to view the video but couldn't (some of you apparently could), I apologize. It works now.

In a private ceremony at a secret time and place (revealed on the morning of the meeting to be a windowless, padded-wall conference room in a suburban hotel), the Deputy, Geoff Michel, was stripped of his epaulets and brass buttons by the Minnesota senate's Republican caucus. (Dave Senjem, God bless him, proved that some people will, in fact, eat anything, by agreeing to be the Majority Leader.)

As a principal architect of the serial ineptitude of handling of the removal of Amy Koch from her position as the majority leader (or her removal at all), the entirely unrelated -- so they say -- simultaneous firing of Michael Brodkorb, and the comical cockup in the messaging about the whole, um, affair, there wasn't much question that he'd walk the plank. (I'm  mixing metaphors; I know; don't write in. I'm just inspired by Michael Brodkorb.)

For those of us who know Michel the best, none of this was much of a surprise.

From his abrupt about face on conceal and carry way back in the first year of his first term (and now claiming that he's always been against it when he campaigned for it before that first election and after seeing how seriously he had misjudged the citizens of Edina on the issue), his pledge signing and fealty to David Strom and the Taxpayers League and his refusal to support even a modest increase in the gasoline tax while the state's roads and bridges crumbled, his willingness to be the ever-faithful retainer of Governor Gutshot, supporting the latter's "kick the can down the road" approach to state fiance, his offer of a bill to eliminate the corporate income tax and one to eliminate consumer protection class action suits in Minnesota, his claim that the state could authorize some kind of domestic partnership for gays after the Bachmann amendment as originally proposed was passed (it couldn't have; Bachmann's language prohibited gay marriage or "marriage equivalents"), to his description last session how Bloomington was getting ready for a loss of Local Government Aid when Bloomington has not received any LGA for years -- and the list goes on, but you get the picture -- this fiasco has Michel written all over it.

So with this video let's all bid a fond adieu to the fumbling leadership of our pal the Deputy.